30-Aug-2016 -- My final Degree Confluence visit on this trip through the Western U.S. was to this point - in central Nevada - that I had previously attempted to visited more than seven years ago, in April 2009. At that time I had attempted to approach the point from the northwest, but found the access road (Northumberland Road) to be too overgrown to drive on.

This time, while driving north from Tonopah towards Austin, I tried approaching the point from the southwest, and was pleasantly surprised to find that the access road (Toquima Range Road) from that direction is quite different: It’s a wide smooth gravel road that’s easy to drive on. This road passes just 160 feet northwest of the point.

This point is quite similar to the adjacent point 39N 116W that I had visited the previous day. 39N 116W lies within the “Little Smoky Valley”; this point lies within the “Big Smoky Valley”. (Actually, both valleys looked ‘big’ to me.) Also, 39N 116W lies directly on a dirt road; this point lies just 160 feet from a gravel road.

One thing that I liked about this point is that it appeared ‘pristine’. For a change, there was no rock cairn, ‘geocache’ box, or any sign of human presence at all at the point. My visit was the first recorded visit to this point in almost 12 years - and it seems conceivable that there really have been no other visitors to this point during that time.